Final Exam Review

Overview of the Twentieth Century

The Twentieth Century was a period of tremendous change that affected almost every way that people lived their lives – by the end of the century people were living longer, freer and in greater comfort than they had at the beginning of the century. The way technology has improved people’s lives during the twentieth century was unprecedented in human history. Many common everyday items in the early twenty-first century, such as cars, airplanes, telephones, computers, in-door plumbing, air conditioning, and television were unknown, uncommon or had not been invented at the start of the twentieth century. The simple statistic that global life expectancy in 1900 was about 35 years and that it increased to 70 years (80 years in wealthy countries) by 2000 is testament to the impact of these improvements. While the twentieth century marked a general improvement in people’s lives, it was also a century of tremendous conflict and upheaval.

Interwar Years (1919 – 1939)

World War One was a devastating conflict that killed a generation of young men and caused four European empires (Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Ottoman) to collapse. The Versailles Treaty that ended the war created new problems that would result in World War Two and many other conflicts around the world in the twentieth century. Some of the new governments that were created after World War One were democracies in which participation in government was expanded to give women the right to vote – like in the Ireland and Czechoslovakia. However, in other countries, like Germany and the Soviet Union, the new governments that came to power were often dictatorships that had the goal of radically changing these countries.

Russia was devastated by World War One and this resulted in the country becoming the first communist country in the world. Popular anger over the hardships created by the war caused a revolt in February 1917 (even before World War One ended) that forced absolute monarch of Russia to abdicate (resign being the king). The weak democratic government took power was soon overthrown in October 1917 by a group called the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin. Lenin and the Bolsheviks were communists and they wanted to radically change Russia into a communist society. Communists want to create a society where the government owns everything and people do not work for personal gain, but instead for the improvement of society. In theory, the government of a communist society would collect the entire wealth of a society and divide between everyone in society so no one is poor. However, in practice, communist governments brutalized and impoverished the societies they ruled. After taking over Russia, Lenin and the Bolsheviks renamed the country to the Soviet Union. Lenin died soon after the Soviet Union was established.

Joseph Stalin took over the Soviet Union after the death of Lenin. Stalin ruled the Soviet Union as a totalitarian dictator, which meant that he had full control over the people who lived in the country. This meant he controlled where people lived and worked. He also controlled all sources of information in the Soviet Union. He used this power to build a “cult of personality” in which the people of the Soviet Union saw him as an all-powerful force – which had to be obeyed. He used this power to make sweeping changes to the country that took away private property (like land and houses) and forced people to work on government projects to make the country an industrial power. For example, farmers were forced to turn their private firms into giant collective farms owned by the government and they were ordered grow food for the government. If they did not grow enough food, then they would not be given any food. It is estimated that 7 million farmers were starved to death because they could not grow enough food. Stalin also forced people to build industrial projects, like factories, railroads and hydroelectric dams, across the country. This made the Soviet Union an industrial power, but it came at a terrible price in human lives. In order to make people obey his rule, he used a secret police force to called the NKVD to kill anyone who showed any opposition to his rule and to force millions more to work in prison labor camps called the GULAG. It is estimated that 20 million people died under Stalin’s rule. Germany was also devastated by World War One and this resulted in country developing a Nazi Government. Germany lost a generation of young men and bankrupted by the war. Worse, the Treaty of Versailles that ended the war forced Germany to pay England and France for their losses in the war. The weak democratic government that Germany had after the war was blamed for this situation. The world-wide economic crisis called the Great Depression which began in 1929 caused millions in Germany to lose their jobs and pushed many in the country into poverty. In 1932, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party used this popular anger over the Depression and the end of World War One to take over Germany. Hitler and the Nazis wanted to create a racially pure Germany in which the only people who would be able to live in Germany would be people considered to be part of the “German” race. Everyone who the Nazis did not think was “German” was to be thrown out of the country, made into slaves or killed. Hitler and Nazis focused most of their hatred on Jewish people who they irrationally saw as being responsible for all of Germany’s problems, including the peace treaty that ended World War One. Once he came to power, Hitler made himself a totalitarian dictator and ruled with the support of a secret police force called the Gestapo who would kill anyone who opposed him. He used his dictatorial powers to drive the Jews out of Germany and build up the German army to achieve his goal of making a “Greater Germany” by taking over large parts of Europe.

China fell into revolution and civil war at the beginning of the twentieth century, when the Emperor of China was overthrown in 1905. The causes of the Chinese revolution were rooted in the inability of the Chinese government to respond to European imperialism. The Opium Wars in the nineteenth century showed the weakness of the Chinese government because the Europeans were able to force the Chinese to trade with them. The weakness of the Chinese government and created resentment among the Chinese people that resulted in both the Taiping and Boxer Rebellions that further weakened the Chinese government. The Chinese revolution was lead by Sun Yat-sen who wanted to China into a democratic country with rights. However, he was not able to take control of the country and China fell into chaos as war lords took over parts of the country. The Soviet Union helped Sun Yat-Sen was able to build a Nationalist army to re-take the country from the war lords, but Sun Yat-sen died before this could happen. His assistant Chiang Kai-shek used this army to defeat the war lords and unite China again. However, Chiang Kai-shek did not support democracy and made himself a dictator. This lead to a civil war in China between Mao Zedong, a communist leader supported by the Soviet Union, and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists. Chiang Kai-shek had the stronger army and was able to defeat Mao and communists, but he was unable to destroy them. In 1934, Mao saved his communist army from destruction by leading it on a 6,000 mile retreat across China called the Long March. While Mao lost most of his army during the Long March, he was able to keep enough support to rebuild his army and continue the civil war against Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists.

At the same time that Mao was fighting Chiang in China, Mohandas Gandhi was leading the Indian people in non-violent protest to the British rule of India. The British had ruled India for more than a century and considered it the most valuable of its colonies – it was the “jewel in the crown”. The British ruled India so as to enrich Britain and did little to improve the lives of Indians. In general, the British looked down on Indian culture and used India to grow crops, like cotton, that were needed by British industry. The effect of British rule on India can be seen in the reality that India suffered several devastating famines during the time it was under British rule and has not suffered a single famine since it has become independent. Gandhi success in winning Indian independence was based in his recognition that the Indians would not be able to defeat the British in a violent revolution. He also knew that the British thought of themselves as more civilized and morally superior to the Indians He decided to use nonviolent passive resistance against the British because they could not defeat him with force and, when they did use force, it made the Indians look morally superior. Shortly after the end of World War Two, the British granted India independence. Unfortunately, the process of making India independent caused horrific religious violence between the Muslim and Hindu populations as the country was divided into the two countries of India and Pakistan. It is estimated that 2 million people died in this violence. However, since then, India has been a democratic society and it now the world's largest democracy.

World War Two (1939 – 1945)

World War Two was the worst war in human history. More than 60 million people (2.5% of the world population) were killed in this conflict. The war was fought as two conflicts, one in Europe and the other in Asia.

World War Two in Europe had its origins in the anger and bitterness Germans had about World War One. Adolf Hitler came to power in 1932 promising to avenge World War One and build a new German Empire. Hitler rebuilt the German military and planned for war. In 1938, Hitler took over the country of Austria and then, the next year, took over the Czechoslovakia. The other countries of Europe did nothing to stop Hitler’s aggression because they did not want to fight another war – they were haunted by the devastation of World War One.

World War Two began in Europe in September 1939, when Hitler ordered the German army to attack Poland. Hitler was joined by Stalin in this attack, and in a few short weeks Germany and the Soviet Union conquered Poland and divided it between them. In the spring of the next year, Hitler attacked the countries of Western Europe and, again in just a few weeks, conquered most of Western Europe. The only country to hold out was Britain under the leadership of Winston Churchill. Churchill rallied the British people to hold out in their “darkest hour” against Hitler’s Germany despite the daily bombing raids the Germany air force carried out on Britain by saying that Britain would "Never Surrender". Churchill’s strength as a leader helped the British defeat the German air force to win the Battle of Britain, which prevented Germany from invading Britain. Unable to conquer Britain, Hitler next turned to attack Stalin’s Soviet Union. Hitler’s attacked the Soviet Union to fulfill his goal of gaining “living space” for the German people. Hitler considered the Russian people to be “sub-human” and he wanted to build a German empire in Russia and turn the Russian people into slaves. In 1941, Hitler broke his treaty with Stalin and launched a massive invasion of the Soviet Union, nearly capturing the Soviet capital of Moscow before the Germany army was stopped by the cold Russian winter. The war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union was a brutally vicious war in which both sides killed prisoners of war and civilians. For the first two years of the war, the Germans were winning the war, but in 1943, the Soviets were able to turn the tide by winning the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk. By this time, the United States had joined the Allied side (Britain, France and Soviet Union) in the war and together they fought for two more years to defeat Nazi Germany.

The United States played a crucial role in the Allied war effort because it is larger industrial base. It could produce the weapons the Allied side needed to defeat Germany - this is the reason the United States was called the "Great Arsenal of Democracy." The war in Europe only ended in the spring of 1945, when the Soviet army captured the German capital of Berlin and Hitler committed suicide. However, before he died, over the course of World War Two, Nazi Germany carried out the Holocaust, one of the worst genocides in history, when it attempted to kill all of the Jewish people in Europe. During the war, as the German army conquered countries, the Nazis rounded up millions of Jewish people and murdered them either by shooting them or sending them to extermination camps like Auschwitz. The Nazis killed six million Jews and four million other people they considered “sub-human”. The Nazi killings only ended when Germany was defeated. World War Two was also fought in Asia. This war in Asia began when Japan attacked China in 1937 to get resources it needed for its industry. The Japanese drive to get resources for industry began during the Meiji Restoration in the middle of the nineteenth century. The Meiji Restoration was when Japan turned away from its samurai feudal traditions and adopted European and American ways to build a modern industrial country. Japan did this to protect itself from being taken over the way China had been by Europeans. Unfortunately, Japan does not have large amounts of iron and coal needed for building modern industry. As a result, Japan built a modern army and began to take over Korea and parts of China to get the resources. In this way, Japanese imperialism was similar to European imperialism. At the beginning of World War Two, the Japanese attacked coastal China and then expanded to conquer large parts of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean to get more natural resources. During World War Two, the Japanese were similar to their Nazi German allies in how they brutally treated the people they conquered – killing prisoners and forcing people to be slave laborers. The Japanese invasion of China devastated Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government. It was unable to stop the Japanese invasion and tried to avoid fighting the Japanese. In contrast, Mao’s communists did fight against the Japanese. The result was that many Chinese people turned to support Mao and the communists during the war. The United States became involved in the Asia war when the Japanese attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in 1941. The United States fought a long war against the Japanese for control of the Pacific Ocean. In addition, the United States assisted the Chinese in their war against Japan. After four years of brutal island fighting, in which the United States slowly pushed the Japanese back across the Pacific. The United States ended the war by dropping two atomic bombs on Japan. After the atomic bombs were dropped, Japan quickly surrendered.

The development and use of the atomic bomb at the end of World War Two introduced a radical new weapon to war. By harnessing the power from splitting the atom, the United States was able to build a bomb that could destroy an entire city in seconds. However, the United States was not the only country to build the atomic bomb. In 1949, four years after the war, the Soviet Union also developed the atomic bomb. This set the stage for the Cold war conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union that would dominate the second half of the twentieth century.

Cold War (1945 – 1989)

At the end of the World War Two, the United States and the Soviet Union were the only major powers left in the world. These two countries were called “Super Powers” because they controlled and influenced events around the world. These two countries were hostile to each other because they had very different views about the world. The United States was a capitalist democracy and the Soviet Union was a communist dictatorship. Between 1945 and 1989, these two countries fought a global conflict called the Cold War. In this conflict, the two countries acted toward each other like they were at war, however because of nuclear weapons, they could not directly fight each other – that is why it was described as “cold” (a “hot” war means fighting). The nuclear weapons stand-off in the Cold War was explained by the idea of Mutually Assured Destruction. There was no reason for either country to start a war since they would also be destroyed in that war. However, this did not mean that both countries did not threaten each other with nuclear weapons. For example, in the Cuban Missile Crisis, the world came very close to nuclear war when the United States challenged the Soviet Union’s action to place nuclear missiles in Cuba.

Because of nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union and the United States avoided direct confrontation and instead fought proxy wars against each other. A proxy war is when a country tries to hurt its enemy by supporting another country in a war against its enemy. The wars in Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan are examples of proxy wars in which the United States and the Soviet Union indirectly fought each other during the Cold War. In these proxy wars, the Soviet Union supported groups that were fighting to spread communism around the world and the United States supported groups that were opposed to communism.

After World War Two in Europe, Europe was divided between the United States and the Soviet Union. The United States build permanent bases in Europe and defended the rebuilding of democracy and capitalism in Western Europe. The United States even rebuild and protected the western part of Germany, which became the country of West Germany. In contrast, the Soviet Union made all of the countries of Eastern Europe into communist countries that were defended by the Soviet Union. Many people in Europe were unhappy living in communist countries and attempted to escape. This was especially the case with East Germany. In response, the Soviet Union built the Berlin Wall to prevent people from escaping communism. The Berlin Wall became a symbol of the division and oppression of the Cold War. In 1989, the people of Germany tore down the Berlin Wall and the Cold War ended as the communist governments in Eastern Europe collapsed and the countries became capitalist democracies.

Cold War in Asia

The Cold War in Asia was more violent because the United States and the Soviet Union fought proxy wars for control over the countries of the region. China was where the first Cold War conflict happened in Asia. The Soviet Union supported Mao Zedong in the Chinese Civil War. Despite, United States’ help to Chiang Kai-shek, Mao was able to win the Chinese Civil War and make China a communist country in 1949. Once in power, Mao enacted radical plans to make China into a Communist country. First, in 1958, he announced the Great Leap Forward to make China an industrial country in 10 years. Mao ordered the peasants to move onto large communal farms and build back-yard steel furnaces to make steel. The goal was for the peasants to grow more food and make more steel at the same time. However, this policy resulted in a massive famine that killed as many as 50 million people because the peasants grew too little food and melted down their farming and cooking tools in the steel furnaces. After this, in 1966, Mao announced the Cultural Revolution, in which the young people of China were encouraged to rebel against the authority of the communist government. The result was social chaos that only ended when the army was sent in to restore order across China. After Mao died in 1976, China began to turn away from radical communist ideas. After China became Communist, the Cold War spread when communist North Korea attacked democratic South Korea in 1950. The United States fought to defend the South and the Soviet Union supported the North. After several years of terrible fighting, neither side was able to win the war and both sides signed a cease-fire. The result was that Korea remained divided between a democratic South Korea and a communist North Korea. The war in Vietnam was the next Cold War conflict in Asia. This war began when the North Vietnamese, lead by Ho Chi Minh, fought first the French for independence and then the United States to make all of Vietnam a communist country. The wars in Vietnam raged from the mid 1950’s all the way to 1975, when the United States pulled out of the war and Vietnam became a communist country.

At the same time that the United States and the Soviet Union were fighting the Cold War in Asia, other Asian countries went through a process of rapid economic development that made them some of the wealthiest countries in the world. This process began in Japan after World War Two. Japan used a policy called "authoritarian development" where the government worked with businesses to become major global companies. This policy helped Japan rebuild itself into an export-oriented economy that produced goods like cars and electronics and sold them to the rest of the world. A group of other Asian countries - South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong - followed the Japanese model for growing their economies and became known as the “Asian Tigers”.

Cold War in Middle East

The Middle East became a region of Cold War conflict because of the formation of Israel and dependence of the United States on Middle Eastern oil. Israel was created in the Middle East as homeland for the Jewish people after World War Two. The near destruction of the Jewish people in the Holocaust convinced them and the world that the Jewish people needed their own country. However, many of the Arab people in the Middle East opposed the creation of Israel because it was being formed on Arab land. The Palestinian people were an Arab people who had lived in the area that was to become Israel. The wanted their own country of Palestine. The conflict over this land meant that the Arab nations all attacked Israel on the day it was created in 1948. However, Israel was determined to fight and was able to defeat the united Arab armies in this war. After this defeat, the Arab nations turned to the Soviet Union for military aid so they could build modern armies. In this way, the Middle East became part of the Cold War conflict as the Soviet Union supported the Arab nations and the United States supported Israel. With Soviet help, the Arabs attempted to destroy Israel in the Six Day War and in the Yom Kippur War. Israel won both of these wars and the Palestinian people lost their lands. Since then the Palestinians have been forced to live in refugee camps. The Arab countries encouraged the Palestinians to keep fighting and the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat organized the Palestinian Liberation Organization to use terrorist attacks to hurt Israel.

During the Cold War, the United States supported dictatorial leaders in the Middle East because it was economically dependent of on oil from the region. For example, the United States had supported a dictator in overthrowing the democratic government of Iran. The region of the Middle East was shaken by the Iranian Revolution in 1979, when the Islamic leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the American supported government of Iran. Khomeini’s leadership rejected both the liberal ideas of the United States (which he called the “Great Satan”) and the communist ideas of the Soviet Union. Instead, he began the Islamic Revolution which had the goal of making the religion of Islam the governing idea for the countries of the Middle East. This idea had a powerful effect across the entire region. The Soviet Union responded by invading Afghanistan because it was afraid the ideas of the Islamic Revolution would encourage rebellion within the Soviet Union. The United States viewed this as communist aggression and supported the Afghans in a proxy war against the Soviet Union. However, when the Cold War ended, the Soviet Union withdrew from the country and the United States stopped supporting the Afghanis. After this, Afghanistan fell into a terrible civil war that ended with a radical Islamic group, called the Taliban, taking over the country. The Taliban allowed radical Islamic terrorist groups, such as Al-Qaeda, to use the country as a base for international terrorism.

Cold War in Africa

At the time that the Cold War began, Africa was still controlled by European countries as colonies. The European countries took over Africa in the nineteenth century after they divided the continent between themselves at the Berlin Conference. While the Europeans said they were taking over Africa because of a “civilizing mission” to improve the lives of Africans, the reality was that they wanted to control Africa to get resources for their industry. This can be clearly seen in the way the Belgians ran the Congo Free State. The Belgians brutally forced the Congolese to work for them gathering ivory and rubber – it is estimated that 10 million Congolese died in the Congo Free State. Other European counties, like Britain, France and Germany were just at brutal in using the Maxim gun to destroy native African tribes. In general, the Europeans looked down on the Africans and did little to improve the lives of Africans and prepare them to rule themselves as modern nations. African nations did not begin to win their independence until the late 1950’s. The first country to become independent was Ghana in 1957. Over the next decade most of Africa became independent. While African independence was seen as a moment of hope and optimism, the reality that the countries were not prepared for self-rule and independence created many problems in these countries. Many of the countries were taken over by dictators who ruled as “Big Men” who used the wealth of the countries to enrich their families and tribes. As a result, African governments did not use the countries’ natural resources wealth to improve the lives of their people. For example, most people in Nigeria live in poverty even though the country is one of the world’s largest oil producers. Botswana is an important exception to this because it has a government that is not corrupt and has improved the lives of its population. The Cold War had a terrible effect on Africa because the United States and the Soviet Union supported terrible governments and fought proxy wars in order to gain control of African resources. For example, the United States supported the Congolese dictator Mobuto even though he ran a “vampire government” that stole billions from its own people. The Soviet Union supported the Ethiopian dictator Mengistu even though he killed millions by using food as a weapon to starve out tribes he considered enemies. Both the United States and the Soviet Union provided military weapons that made the civil wars in places like Angola, Mozambique and Namibia, longer and bloodier.

Cold War in Latin America

The conditions in Latin America in the twentieth century have their roots in the Spanish discovery and conquest of the region. The Spanish conquistadors destroyed the American civilizations of the Aztecs and the Incas and the diseases they brought to the Americas killed large numbers of Native Americans. The Spanish built an empire that went from North America down through South America (except for Brazil that was controlled by Portugal). In the Spanish Empire, similar to other European empires, the white population owned all of the land and forced the Native Americas or African slaves to work growing crops like sugar and coffee or mining silver. This economic structure is a large reason for the high level of economic inequality that continues in the Latin America to the current day. The countries of Latin America became independent following the Napoleonic Wars when nationalistic leaders like Simon Bolivar fought the Spanish for independence. After the countries of Latin America became independent, they were ruled by military strongmen called caudillos who ruled over a country where the white population held all of the political and economic power. The Mexican Revolution at the beginning of the twentieth century was driven by this inequality in which the revolutionaries wanted to win “land and liberty”. The government that came to power in Mexico did improve the lives of Mexicans, but most of Mexico remained poor. The Cold War in Latin America resulted in the United States and the Soviet Union became involved in this conflict of inequality. The United States viewed that anything that would help the poor, and reduce the inequality, was a Soviet plot to expand communism. The United States used the Monroe Doctrine to justify its actions to prevent the spread of communism in Latin America. The Cold War struggle over Latin America began when Fidel Castro took over Cuba in 1958 and made it a communist country. The Soviet Union tried to take advantage of communist Cuba by putting nuclear missiles in Cuba. The United States opposed this and brought the world to the point of nuclear war in a showdown called the Cuban Missile Crisis. The showdown ended with the Soviets agreeing to not put missiles in Cuba in return for a promise that the United States would not invade Cuba. Cuba would remain a communist island in the American sphere of influence for the duration of the Cold War – and it continues to be a communist country decades after the Cold War has ended.

After this, the United States supported military dictators in Latin America to stop the spread of communism. Many of these governments used death squads to “disappear” anyone opposed to them in a “dirty war” that killed more than 100,000 people. While these military governments could rule through terror, they could not solve the deep economic problems that troubled Latin America. A series of global economic crises caused Latin America to suffer though a terrible economic downturn that finally forced the military dictatorships from power in the 1980’s and brought about the return of democracy to the region.

End of the Cold War (1989 – Present)

Over the course of the second part of the twentieth century, it became clear that the communist countries could not compete with the democratic countries. Quite simply, people in the democratic capitalist countries in Europe, North America and Asia (Japan and “Asian Tigers”) were freer and enjoyed a higher quality of life than people in the communist countries. This inability to keep up economically slowly eroded the ability of the Soviet Union to keep up with the United States in the military stand-off of the Cold War. All across the communist world, governments tried to reform, but the communist system could not be fixed. In the Soviet Union, the leader Mikhail Gorbachev came to power with the goal of reforming the Soviet Union and ending the Cold War with the United States. He succeeded in negotiating an end to the Cold War with American President Ronald Reagan. He also carried out the policies of Glasnost and Perestroika. Glasnost gave people in the Soviet Union freedom of speech and Perestroika tried to reform the economy by letting people run their own businesses. However, his efforts to fix the communist system in the Soviet Union result in the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Quite simply, when people were given a choice about communism, they chose to get rid of communism. The end of the Cold War began in 1989, when the countries of Eastern Europe which has been rebelled against Soviet rule and gave up communism to become democratic countries. The people of East Germany tore down the Berlin Wall, the symbol of the Cold War division of Europe. Then, in 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist and country of Russia was reborn.

As the Cold War ended, the countries of Europe organized themselves into the European Union, which was envisioned as being a “United States of Europe”. These countries began to work together to deal with common problems and opened their borders to the free movement of people. Many of the formerly communist countries of Eastern Europe were invited to join this organization. However, not all of Europe has moved toward the European Union. Russia, under Vladimir Putin, has become an authoritarian country that seeks to undermine the countries around it that become too close the United States and the European Union.

At roughly, the same time that the Cold War was ending in Europe, the communist government in China under Deng Xiaoping began to turn away from the radical communism or Mao and become more capitalistic. Deng gave the Chinese people freedom to start businesses and make money. He also allowed American and European companies to build factories and employ cheap Chinese workers in Special Economic Zones built in China. In doing this, Deng essentially was doing the same thing the “Asian Tigers” did and follow the Japanese model of making the country wealthy by producing goods to be sold to the rest of the world. Deng's economic reforms have made China the second largest economy in the world. However, Deng did not give the Chinese people full freedom. He saw how Gorbachev’s reforms resulted in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Deng kept all political power for himself. When the Chinese people asked for democracy in 1989 at large protests in Tienanmen Square, Deng Xiaoping ordered the Chinese army to crush the protests. As a result, China has remained communist in name and capitalist in practice – but without democracy. The end of the Cold War brought significant changes to the Middle East. The United States was able to get the Israelis and Arabs to agree to a general peace under the idea that Israel would give the Palestinians land in return for peace. However, the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan created an opportunity for Islamic terrorist organizations, like Al-Qaeda, to use the country as a place to plan global terrorist attacks. Following the September 11th attacks in 2001, the United States invaded Afghanistan as part of a global war on terror. The United States then used the pretext of fighting terrorism to invade Iraq in 2003 (the United States said Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction” - but it did not). Since then, the United State has been trying to build effective governments in both countries in the face of a violent insurgency that brought both countries to the point of civil war. However, the whole region of the Middle East has become more unstable following a series of revolts across the Arab countries called the Arab Spring in 2010. While these revolts began with the goal of building democratic societies, the result has been more brutal dictatorships (Egypt) or civil wars (Libya and Syria). The combined chaos in Syria and Iraq allowed the Islamic State to come into existence. The Islamic State is a nihilistic organization that seeks to destroy anything it does not see as “Islamic” and has supported terrorism around the world. Currently, the United States is working with countries in the Middle East and Europe to defeat the Islamic State.

The end of the Cold War brought an end to many of the civil wars across Africa and more African countries becoming democracies. The most significant change was in South Africa, where Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress were finally able to end the racist system of Apartheid in South Africa. The System of Apartheid had allowed the white government of South Africa to rule over and oppress the black majority of South Africa for decades. The South African government held Mandela in prison for 27 years because of his opposition to Apartheid. In 1990, Mandela was released and he worked with the white government of South Africa to bring Apartheid to a peaceful end and make South Africa a country of racial equality. In 1994, Mandela was elected the first black president of South Africa. However, large parts of Africa are still troubled by tribal violence and problems that go back to European imperialism. For example, tribal conflicts led to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda that killed 800,000 people in ten weeks and later spilled into a war that consumed the whole region of the Congo for a decade. In addition, Africa remains the poorest part of the world with a shockingly low life expectancy (between 50 and 60 years) because of the AIDS crisis in the region. Currently, many people hope that new technologies like cell phones and solar power will allow African nations to develop into fully modern societies. Similar to Africa, the region of Latin America has also become more democratic since the end of the Cold War. Now that this region has build stable democracies, it is hoped that the governments will do more to solve the problem of economic inequality and raise the standard of living across the region. However, many parts of the region have been badly affected by the “drug wars” that are being fought between the governments of the region and drug cartels that have killed thousands with “narco-terrorism”.